With your support, we can make a difference in the lives of patients at the QEII Health Sciences Centre. Listed below are some of the current top funding priorities. To find out more about how you can help, please call 473-7932.
- now serving patients but the funding need continues
A car skids off a slippery road… a senior walking his dog has a sudden heart attack… a carpenter falls from a roof… accidents that happen every day and result in some of the 58,000 plus visits to the Emergency Department at the QEII Health Sciences Centre - the busiest emergency facility in the region and a leading centre for emergency medicine education and research.
In 2007, the Foundation announced its partnership with the Nova Scotia Department of Health to construct a $21 million new, greatly expanded Emergency & Trauma Centre - the largest of its kind in Atlantic Canada. In June 2009, the Centre opened its doors to patients. Officially named the Charles V. Keating Emergency and Trauma Centre, in honour of the late Mr. Keating, a lifetime philanthropist and generous donor, it was a proud day for the QEII Foundation and the many donors who recognized the value of investing in health care and supported the construction along the way.
While the Charles V. Keating Emergency and Trauma Centre is now serving patients, the funding need for this facility continues. With almost $4 million of its funding commitment successfully secured by the Foundation to date, the remaining portion to be raised offers donors an opportunity to become involved in a project that has an immediate impact on countless lives.
Whether it’s a catastrophic head injury or a neurological disease with debilitating effects, the Brain Repair Centre (BRC) at the QEII Health Sciences Centre is there to provide Atlantic Canada with the very latest in neurological treatments, like neurological implants or the replacement of brain tissue to recover lost capabilities. BRC is pioneering studies involving imaging, stem cell neurobiology, pharmacology, psychiatry, ophthalmology, neurology and cognitive neuroscience, and is dedicated to disorders such as Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, Alzheimer’s, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), Multiple Sclerosis, serious mental illness, stroke, epilepsy, vision dysfunction, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, cancer and chronic pain.
The addition of an Intra-operative MRI will allow surgeons at the Brain Repair Centre the ability to visualize brain repair procedures in real-time during surgery – something currently not available anywhere in Atlantic Canada.
The Intra-operative MRI is a highly sophisticated diagnostic imaging tool which has been shown to be of great benefit in brain tumour surgery and biopsy. It also shows promise in spine, vascular and epilepsy surgery.
Diagnostic Imaging Equipment and Support Systems
Diagnostic imaging creates images of the human body to enable physicians to better detect disease and injury, and is the cornerstone of the world class treatment that Atlantic Canadians have come to expect from the QEII Health Sciences Centre. Having leading-edge diagnostic imaging equipment keeps the health sciences centre at the forefront of both patient care and medical education.
In past, donors to the QEII Foundation have generously enabled the purchase of advanced diagnostic equipment such as P.E.T. (Positron Emission Tomography), and the Foundation is currently seeking to fund the cyclotron required for the P.E.T. process. This advanced technology, when acquired, will remove the need for the QEII Health Sciences Centre to depend on sources outside of Atlantic Canada to produce the materials needed for a P.E.T. scan of a patient.
Arthroplastic surgery can greatly improve a person’s quality of life and mobility by replacing damaged joints with artificial ones. It’s one of the most successful ways to treat arthritis. Unfortunately, prosthetic joints like knees and hips have a limited lifetime, lasting anywhere from 10-20 years. As younger patients receive arthroplastic surgery, this later results in painful revision surgery to replace the failed prosthetic. This type of surgery is less successful and several times more costly than the initial procedure. Currently, orthopaedic surgeons have no method to detect or monitor the stability of implants and track their durability.
Donors like you can change this. With an Endowed Chair in Arthroplasty Outcomes at the QEII, researchers can develop methods to monitor prosthetics – like with ground-breaking radiostereometric analysis (RSA) studies. This information will allow orthopaedic specialists to intervene before implants fail and the side-effects set-in, greatly improving the quality of life for patients.
The Eye Care Centre at the QEII Health Sciences Centre, and the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at Dalhousie University represent one of the most well-respected research departments in the country. As the need for retinal research blossoms worldwide and new techniques are investigated to treat eye disease, particularly age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy, a Foundation Scholar in Retinal Research will greatly benefit patients in Atlantic Canada.
The QEII Health Sciences Centre’s Multi-Organ Transplant Program (MOTP) serves an Atlantic population of almost 3 million, delivering organ transplant services - kidney, liver, heart and pancreas - that would otherwise require extensive travel for patients. Since its inception, over 2,000 Atlantic patients have received new organs through MOTP. The program’s goal is to create a multidisciplinary approach combining clinical and scientific knowledge dedicated to serve current and future patients and develop new therapeutic strategies. An Endowed Chair in Transplantation will further develop the Atlantic Region as a national leader in organ transplantation.
The QEII Foundation encourages gifts that are designated to a particular area or program within the health centre. Donors who have a particular interest or health-related cause within the QEII can work with a member of the Foundation staff to ensure that their contribution is used for this specific purpose. It is the role of the Foundation staff member to ensure that any designated gift to the Foundation is consistent with the mission and mandate of Capital Health, the QEII Health Sciences Centre and the QEII Foundation.